Legend said that a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice near Chrudim in the Czech Republic was sentenced to being walled up alive for breaking his monastic vows.

To avoid punishment, the monk promised to write, in a single night, a book containing all human knowledge.

As midnight approached, the monk became desperate and turned to Lucifer for help, offering to make a pact to finish the book in exchange for his soul.

Lucifer agreed and signed the work by adding a self-portrait of himself. In the colorful image, he is placed against an empty landscape framed by two large towers.

The National Geographic examined the book and had handwriting analysis done by palaeographer Michael Gullick at the National Library of Sweden who said it was write by one scribe who did the entire manuscript.

Also found was a signature ‘hermann inclusis’ which indicates there was likely a single author.

The ink use to write the book was discovered to be made from crushed insect nests, and Gullick claimed that it is highly unlikely one scribe would use different types of ink.

Calligraphy experts did tests to recreate the writing in the Devil’s Bible and believed it would take five years of non-stop writing to create it.

“Clearly, the author of this massive tome was possessed by something to create such a masterwork. Whether it was the power of light or darkness, is lost to time,” their report claimed.

The Codex Gigas is made up of five long texts along with the complete Bible.

The book starts with the Old Testament, and followed by two works from Flavius Josephus who lived in the first century AD.

It ends with the New Testament and the last of the long works is a Chronicle of Bohemia by Cosmas from Prague.

Some researchers don’t believe the legend of the punished monk saying it’s a misunderstanding in the signature of the book which reads Hermanus inclusus.

The word ‘inclusus’ in Latin is thought to signify a horrific punishment, but the word’s true meaning is closer to ‘recluse’.

This means the signature could have been made by a solitary monk who chose to shut out the outside world and dedicate his life to the Codex Gigas.

To view a digitised version of every page of the manuscript, click here: www.kb.se